JOLIET, Ill. — Chicagoland Speedway is back.
And while this Fourth of July weekend marks the first trip to the 1.5-mile oval for the newest drivers in the NASCAR Cup Series field, all the veterans are reuniting with a long-lost friend.
More than half the drivers (20 of 38) in Sunday’s (July 5) eero 400 field have run a previous Cup race at Chicagoland, and 13 others have made at least one Chicagoland start in either the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, the Craftsman Truck Series or the ARCA Menards Series. So for all but five drivers on Sunday, this weekend is a trip down memory lane.
Three drivers (Denny Hamlin, Brad Keselowski and Alex Bowman) are former Cup winners at this track. A further 12 have won races here in O’Reilly, Trucks and ARCA. There’s been an abundance of lasting memories to go around.
For Michael McDowell, Chicagoland was one of his four ARCA wins in 2007, the year before he made his Cup debut in 2008.
“That whole season was so much fun because I was an open wheel sports car guy coming into the stock car world, not knowing really anything and having a great time that year,” McDowell said. “Just having fast cars and learning and figuring it out, but what I remember about that race is my dad was here, we had family here. My dad is from the Chicago area, so it was a cool win from that standpoint because it was a big weekend for us.”
Chase Briscoe also won an ARCA race at Chicagoland in 2016, and it was one of his six wins that year en route to the series championship. But the most intriguing story from Briscoe’s win was the fact that he revealed he has yet to take a single bite of one of the foods most synonymous with Fourth of July weekend and America itself.
“The only thing I truthfully remember about the ARCA race here is they had a hot dog in victory lane, and I, still to this day, have never had a hot dog,” Briscoe admitted. “And I was like, ‘I’m not going to eat it.’ I’m a super picky eater, and Chad Bryant, my crew chief, came up and literally grabbed me by the neck and said, ‘you’re going to eat this f’ing hot dog.'”
“I took a bite out of the bun and made it look like I took a bite of the hot dog.”
But for all the joy and glory that comes with victory, racing is ultimately a grind and a struggle, and not every memory at a track will be a good one. Just ask Tyler Reddick.
“The two (memories) that come to mind are my O’Reilly races,” Reddick said. “While they were good races, they were also awful memories. I remember my year at JR Motorsports (in 2018), we were trying to just get this thing turned around. We obviously won Daytona, and we were a disaster the rest of the entire year. So as the playoffs were approaching, we come here, we win stage one racing against (Kevin) Harvick. …
“It had the potential to be a really strong day for us. Then we had a slow pit stop and then I sped on pit road the next stop and we were crashed.”
But another driver that has a good memory at the track is Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who won here in 2012, and in doing so, he delivered Ford’s first O’Reilly Series win at Chicagoland in a decade.
“It was cool,” Stenhouse said. “It was Jack (Roush’s) first win at Chicagoland.”
It was also one of Stenhouse’s six wins in 2012 en route to his second consecutive O’Reilly Series championship,
“Just always have really a lot of fun at this racetrack,” Stenhouse continued. “That weekend we actually hit the fence, second lap of practice. Our car was just so fast, and every time we came here, I felt like Mike Kelley (crew chief) gave me a really good race car. It was really fun to drive, and that one was really good to win.”
Kyle Larson hasn’t won at Chicagoland in the Cup series, but he has a lasting memory at the track after his incredible last-lap battle with Kyle Busch in 2018 — a memory that had sadly become more somber since Busch’s death earlier this year on May 21.
“I’ve watched (the finish) a lot here lately because we were coming here again,” Larson said. “You know, I watched it before coming to test (in April) while Kyle was still alive at that time. And then since his passing, you watch it with different meanings. It was a really neat battle. It’s always fun to be a part of battles that still to this day get replayed, and I’ve been a part of a few. So, yeah, I just wish he was here for obvious reasons and (that) we could have another battle.”
Busch was a two-time Cup winner at the track in 2008 and 2018 and one of five drivers to win multiple Cup races at the track. His presence, as it has been at every Cup race since the Coca-Cola 600, will be sorely missed this weekend.
This Fourth of July weekend is one of celebration, mourning and reflection all at once. And for the first time in seven years, plenty of new memories are ready to be made at Chicagoland in the next two days.
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.
Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf
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